Bucket list!

Jungle paradise on earth – La Carolina Lodge (March 3rd-5th), on the eastern slopes of Volcano Tenorio. In leaving Funky Monkey Lodge and running into a road jam on the mountain pass (!) we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of the jungle after a 4 hr (rather bumpy and dusty) ride. The temperature had dropped about 10 degrees, so to about 25 degrees celsius – actually felt cool on the skin compared to (the lovely)burning CR sun on the beach! Upon our arrival, getting out of the car was like entering a sound-machine on full power. The sound of the jungle with birds, insects and animals making so much noise together with the close by river – and it is never-ending! We went to bed to the sounds and woke up to them, it just felt like our senses were on high alert! The moist jungle scents, the coffee brewed the old fashioned way on a wood-fired stove, the smell of burning firewood from the wood fired hot tub and the 2 fireplaces lit morning and evening and home cooked food. There are just a few electric lights, otherwise the paths, eating areas, resting areas and hot tub are lit by wax candles every evening. No need to use the locks the doors but mosquito nets encasing our beds and the bedroom filled with jungle air at night through open window covered by nets. Just stopping by the lovely Tico ladies in the kitchen whenever there was want or need for fresh brewed coffee, tea, freshly pressed juices or hot chocolate. Set times for breakfast, lunch and dinner – together with the rest of the guests. But it never felt crowded – we just felt extremely taken care of and pampered in every possible way. The only way to make contact with the outside world (which we really didn’t feel the need or want for here) was to wander over to the main reception area, and sit down in one of the leather chairs (close by the Hummingbird garden where there was a miniature Hummingbird nest with 3 Hummingbird-babies).

Warm hearted – Costa Ricans are – just like most latinos – exceptionally good and welcoming with children. The staff at La Carolina Lodge were no exception to this – feeding the children hot chocolate, Alejandro taking them horseback riding, milking cows & petting little chicklets, handing them homemade cheese cut into cubes for fish bait to fish in the river and showing the kids Sloths, birds and telling them all about nature, animals and plants all around. The age limit to go horseback riding there is 10 years, so then Alejandro take the smaller kids for a short loop on horseback in the back yard instead, just so they can also get the experience. The 2 cute, young boxers that belong to the owners tag along for everything from milking, to horseback riding, to just cuddling up when evening comes by your leg by the fireplace.

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Earlybirds – walking up the pastures at 7 in the morning with home made hot chocolate to milk the cows, greet&cuddle the chickens and say hi to the pigs, followed by home made breakfast, best ever coffee served in metal cups and home made, wood fired stone oven baked bread. A time to teach the children where our food really comes from. Meat, eggs and milk here comes from the animals living here. The fruit, veggie, chocolate and coffee is from local farmers. Its a fact that a fair amount of Costa Ricans are self preserved when it comes to a lot of food like meat, fruit and vegetables. Many children nowadays grow up thinking meat arrives in the world vacuum packed… We met the sweetest boy, Ryder of about 12-13 y.o. who was at the lodge with his parents. The second morning he came along up to milk cows and say hi to the pigs together with Mille and the other kids. Mille had just gotten to know that all the meat we ate at lunch and dinnertime at the lodge came from the lodge`s own pigs, chickens and cows, and she was really bummed. Ryder caught on to that Mille was a little overwhelmed with the new information, and I overheard him trying to comfort her. Children are so insightful, and some children are especially gentle and kind; He told her that “I understand that you think that it feels sad that we eat these animals. But, you know, Alejandro and the other staff wash, feed and treat the pigs (and the other animals) here really well, and they live maybe 5-6 really good years, which is like a whole lifetime for a person. Then when the time comes, the animals give us meat so that we can grow and live and enjoy good food and lives. So, its like we give them a good life – and they give us something good and important back.” He chatted with her the whole way back to the lodge, and because of the way he explained things, not only did Mille understand it, but it left her with a greater acceptance of the inevitable circle of life. Here too we made friends for life, as Miss Garland and her 3 beautiful children of approximately the same age as Mille and Noah happened to arrive the same day as we came. So we all had someone to hang out with the days we spent there, which made the whole experience even more special.

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Rio Celeste waterfall – Rio celeste means heavenly river, the name reflecting the color of the rivers water. We went here taking part of the walk through Tenorio National park guided by Alejandro.We saw sloths and snakes and primary and secondary rain forest. Although the weathergods weren’t quite on our side this day – the rain pouring down for most the hike – we learnt so much about all the wild animals, the vegetation and all the natural medicines/household use you can make of the different plants found in the jungle. (I found this particular information quite amusing, being in the medical field, in western medicine; According to him, in CR there is a very high number of children with anemia, for some unknown reason. Cocolmeca is a plant, and there is a nature medicine that can be made from the cocolmeca plants leaves and root boiled together with 4 l of water, boils down to 1 liter of bloodcoloured liquid, and drinking a little glass of this every day for 3 months according to him corrects the anemia). Alejandro was like an encyclopedia on two legs, and knows the jungle with animals, serpents and plant like his back pockets. Several times on the walk the passing guides titulated him “Maestro”.

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Arriving at the waterfall – The waters colour is an astonishing deep turquoise, owing to a phenomenon known as Mie scattering; When the Buenavista river upstream with its aluminium and silicon particles meets the Sour Creek with its acidic waters, the resulting interaction causes the suspended particles in the Rio Celeste to scatter light, thus creating the turquoise colour. The walk goes further up the river, to the place where the two rivers meet and the color appear, but by then the children were wet and tired, and even though I really used all my convincing powers there was no way I was winning the battle of having them walk for another 2,5 hours in the pouring rain… Oh well, I guess that just means I have to go back, with the bonus of being able to once again stay at La Carolina Lodge!

On the way back, we swung by quite the celebre tree: an 8-900 year old tree with an immense diameter, and poisonous red/black and blue frogs in the vicinity.

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Horsebackriding around the lodges own path both days guided by Alejandro

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Cooling off in the lovely river right next to the lodge and warming up in the hot tub outside next to it:

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Fishing in the river with home-made cheese is a good a bate as any (at least when we’re not fishing to capture our own dinner, just catch and release):

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Disney-style evenings in moon-and candlelight:

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Bright early mornings, getting up with the sun and the rest of the animals of the jungle to world class coffee and logs on the fire..

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“Too much to do, too much to take in and too little time” (As this was written a couple of weeks before we knew we had to rush off home and leave our lifetime adventure, little did I know that this one sentence would turn out to be so very heartwrenchingly true in just around the next corner).

Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done, appreciated and experienced today – try to live life in the fullest way you can every day. This place is a definite Bucket-list item – PURA VIDA!